Just what cause has operated in the years 1890-1906 to increase the size of the holdings of land it is hard to say, unless it be the expectation that land would have a value, which is aroused by the presence on the Hill every summer of visitors to a number equal to the numbers of the resident population. It is evident at the present time, when the "milk business" has been reduced to half in the past five years, that the farmers are holding their lands with a hope of selling. It is worthy of remark that the tax-list of the town furnish no other data of reliable value, or even of suggestion, being obviously inaccurate and uneven in their reports of the values of land, and of the holdings of personal property. The fact that is not recorded in the above statistics is this: that certain owners, associated in close family ties, own all the land of greatest value. Seven family groups possess, in the names of eleven of the above owners, all the land near the Hotel, all the land for which any one has ever thought of charging more than fifty dollars an acre. These eleven owners of all the land of greatest value possess probably nine-tenths of the personal property. Holdings of property on Quaker Hill are very unequal. The smallest owner of real estate has an acre, and the largest about six hundred acres. Contrasts here are sharp and permanent. The same families have possessed certain properties for many decades, often for two centuries; and generally Quaker Hill families do not sell till they all die or move away. Wealth is increasing on Quaker Hill in the slow course of years, and probably along the lines of present growth, will increase. It is distributed with marked inequality. The tendency, especially in central territory, is toward increasing inequality. There is "a small group at a high degree." Yet the community is generally prosperous and well-to-do. There are none poor. Indeed, the wealthy women who began to come to Mizzen-Top Hotel in 1880, looking about for some poor to assist, were obliged to go off the Hill to the south, and lay hold of a lonely female with a curious nervous malady but self-respecting withal, and deliberately pauperize her. To this process, after some initial struggles, she has submitted through these intervening years. She has now for years been pensioned by the church in Akin Hall through the year, visited in summer by people in carriages, has maintained an extensive begging correspondence through the mails all winter, and has been generally despised by her neighbors. But she has represented to interested clergymen and charity workers on their summer vacations the fascinating and mysterious problem of poverty.[38]